Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: noxemol ce'u

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2001 09:39:29 EDT

In a message dated 10/7/2001 9:46:29 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> But here I have to respond with: What *are* you talking
> about?
> 

The supposed problems with {nei}. I was agreeing wiht you (I think -- it is 
a little hard to tell when you get into tantrums).

<How does "the first man on Mars" have anything to do with {nei}?>
It refers to something that does not yet -- and may never -- exist, like {le 
te nei} in the second place of a bridi.

<Why do you think {nei} can't refer to something later in the sentence?>
I didn't say it couldn't; I just said it causes problems.

<And in your criticism of my saying "recursion" when I meant
"self-reference" you completely failed to get the point. {nei} does
refer to something of which {nei} is a part, and it has to.
Nevertheless, we understand what it means.>

As I said, it is theoretically flawed, but works in practice.

<Another example: "I see a man who is talking to himself". Expand this
out and you get "I see a man who is talking to a man who is talking to
himself", and so on. How can you know who's being referred to without
knowing who he's talking to, and how can you know who he's talking to
without knowing who he is?>

This is a rather different case, not self-reference but simple reflexivity of 
a relation.

<>  <> <* What follows le is a bridi by your definition, but it is not the 
> specific

I find your e-mail quoting style baffling.>

It is not my favorite either, but it is what aol hands out and I am too lazy 
to work up something better.

<> [Since I could read Logic and knew Adjukewicz arithmetic, 
> I did much of the teaching at the first seminars on linguistic theory at 
> UCLA, until they bought a pro.]

What do you want me to do, grovel at your linguistic superiority while
allowing you to redefine {le mamta be ce'u} in a way which doesn't seem
to benefit the language at all?>

Just a mild reproof for "if you can't understand that" applied to a 
transformational derivation. As for defining it in any way at all, I'm not.  
I just note that if it is allowed (and no one seems to know why it is not) 
then this would be what it should mean. And in that usage it would fit in 
nicely with a number of other forms we have: {le ni ce'u barda}, {le du'u 
ce'u broda}, etc.

<> But, at least I see what you were trying to say, and I agree with it 
> wholeheartedly.

You must disagree in the crucial area, because {le broda be le brode} is
not a BRIDI. {broda be le brode} is {lo bridi}, yes, but the Lojban
definition of {bridi} is not related to the parser construct
"sentence_40" which for convenience we call a "bridi" and which here we
are calling a BRIDI.

So {lo bridi} could mean "a large pink elephant" and {ce'u} would still
relate to the BRIDI that contains it, not the large pink elephant that
contains it.

And the BRIDI that contains it is the actual one in the sentence, not
the imaginary one.>

A real head-spinner this! Why call sentence_40 BRIDI rather than sentence?  
Are you sure that is what BRIDI means? It rather tends to my point of view, 
since it is defined in terms of bridi_tail. As for teh rest, did I ever 
suggest that {ce'u} was in the reference ( the thing named) of an expression? 
Where? And it was you, not I, that introduced imaginary terms and had them 
doing the work of reference, etc., in real sentences.

<> Notice, by the way, that, according to you last time (and immediately 
below) 
> {poi} also creeates a separate BRIDI.

"Creates"? It doesn't create a BRIDI. The BRIDI is already there in the
sentence, since by its grammatical definition any NOI word is followed
by a BRIDI.>

OK. "a {poi} phrase contains a BRIDI" then. This just gets boring to say 
over and over.

<Why would I be talking about {ko'a poi broda le brode}? I was talking
about sumti, not relative clauses, and I explicitly used the word
"sumti". Do you wish to quibble over the definition of "sumti" as well?>

{ko'a poi broda le brode} is sumti_E_95.

<You make it sound like the fact that {broda le brode} in {ko'a poi broda
le brode} is a BRIDI is a conclusion that we took a long time to come
to, and which supports your point.

Of course it's a BRIDI. The parser could tell you that. This helps your
argument only as much as the fact that water is wet.>

Rather more, I think, since you went to some effort to show that {lo broda be 
le brode} was a mere grammatical transformation of either this form or 
another with an even more clear BRIDI.